The Toronto International Film Festival is one of the most prestigious of its kind, and has premiered numerous Academy Award®-winning films including American Beauty, Precious, and Black Swan. Since its inception in 1976, hundreds of films premiere at the festival each year, and every single one carries a level of quality and distinction that international audiences have come to equate with the TIFF laurel. We’re thrilled to spotlight a selection of eight outstanding films that have premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, all available to stream here on Kino Film Collection.
Want to go even deeper? Check out our entire playlist of TIFF films on Kino Film Collection now.
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch
Premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival
Nominated for Best Canadian Feature Film
This stunning and sobering documentary follows the research of the Anthropocene Working Group, an international group of scientists who argue that the Earth has entered a new geological phase: the Anthropocene Epoch, a period in which humans impact the planet more than all other natural processes combined. Traveling to 22 countries across multiple continents, the film captures the various industries that significantly contribute to ecological destruction, from metal mining in Russia to ivory poaching in Kenya, to marble quarrying in Italy. With sweeping drone shots of the vastly diverse locations and terrain, Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky’s film reveals the heart-wrenchingly epic scale of manmade planetary ruination, but somehow also makes it visually breathtaking. Narrated by Swedish actress Alicia Vikander, Anthropocene: The Human Epoch is both a poetic meditation and pressing message to the world: humans did this, which means humans can stop this.
Martin Eden
Premiered at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival
Winner of the Platform Prize
Pietro Marcello’s historic drama follows a proletariat writer who falls in love with a member of the bourgeoisie and finds himself torn between his ambitions to climb the ladder and the social issues at the heart of his writing. A sailor with no educational background, Martin Eden is inspired to better himself when he meets the wealthy and beautiful Elena, pouring himself into writing and enduring countless rejected manuscripts before finally breaking through. But what do his aspirations cost him? The film, which features a standout, career-defining performance by Luca Marinelli as the titular character, presents a poignant catch-22: can you achieve success by writing about the struggles of the working class without failing your cause? Martin Eden is based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Jack London, who had his own rags-to-riches story.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
Premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival
There are artists and then there are absolute icons. Grace Jones falls unequivocally in the latter category. She’s a multi-hyphenate musician-actor-model and so much more—she’s a look, she’s an attitude, and, according to contemporary parlance, she’s a vibe. Sophie Fiennes’s documentary mixes concert footage and fly-on-the-wall glimpses into her professional and personal life to peel back all those layers. We see a surprisingly vulnerable side when she pleads with longtime collaborators Sly & Robbie to record with her. We see a raw side when she loses her temper over hotel accommodations and throws a telephone across the room. And we get a rare look at the human behind the statuesque glamazon with intimate interactions with her family in Jamaica. In between these private moments are music performances of “Pull Up to the Bumper,” “Warm Leatherette,” “Love Is the Drug,” and more, which reestablish Jones as the otherworldly performer we know and love. Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is the portrait of an icon—and iconoclast.
Variety
Premiered at the 1983 Toronto International Film Festival
In this 1983 neo-noir, filmmaker Bette Gordon completely subverts the genre’s usual gender norms and tropes. The story follows Christine, a young woman who, by all appearances, could be the typical object of the male gaze, but in Variety, she does all the watching. After taking a job working the ticket booth at a porn theater in Times Square, she becomes obsessed with a male patron named Louie and begins following him to male-dominated spaces and integrating him into her sexual fantasies. Gordon’s film, which critics have called “a feminist Vertigo,” explores female sexuality unabashedly, flipping the script on porn consumption and voyeurism by placing a woman in the driver’s seat. It’s a powerful reminder that women have so much more agency and complexity than film has historically portrayed. Refreshing subversions aside, Variety also boasts an all-star cast, including legendary photographer Nan Goldin, a young Will Patton, and a young Luis Guzmán.
Manufactured Landscapes
Premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival
Winner of Best Canadian Feature Film
Belonging to the same trilogy as Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, Manufactured Landscapes is centered around the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky and directed by Jennifer Baichwal (the two also teamed up for Anthropocene). Burtynsky creates large-scale photographs of manmade landscapes that look beautiful on the surface but, upon closer examination, reveal the grotesque destruction being dealt to the environment. The documentary follows the photographer across China to landscapes that reflect the country’s aggressive history of industrialization, like landfills, coal mines, and oppressively large factories. Like Anthropocene, the film frames perhaps humanity’s ugliest side with breathtaking beauty, which should inspire just enough discomfort in the viewer to look beyond the pretty vistas.
Barbara
Premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival
Sometimes the most tense political thrillers are the most quiet. In Christian Petzold’s Barbara, we feel these tensions in everything the titular character (played by an elegant, controlled Nina Hoss) does. Set in 1980 East Germany, Barbara is a doctor who gets sent to a rural hospital as punishment for plotting to cross the border. Almost as soon as she arrives, and established from the film’s opening scene, she’s being watched. Like the Stasi agents who surveil her, the strength of the film is in watching her every move. She has rigid encounters with her fellow doctors (two of whom are her watchers) but treats her patients warmly. She’s almost maternal with one in particular—a teenage girl who escaped a socialist work camp. In between these moments, she has secret rendezvouses with a lover from West Berlin, meets mysterious people who give her packets of money, and continues to dream of life across the wall. But Barbara soon realizes that no matter which side, she’ll have to leave something behind.
A Faithful Man
Premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival
A Faithful Man is Louis Garrel’s latest foray into love triangles. Garrel, who both directed and stars in the film, first caught the attention of international audiences in 2003’s The Dreamers, in which he played a somewhat incestuous brother caught in an erotic web with his twin sister and an American exchange student. In his 2015 film Two Friends, Garrel and his best friend vie for the affection of the same girl. In A Faithful Man, Garrel finds himself once again in a romantic entanglement. The film follows Abel, whose girlfriend Marianne (played by his real-life wife Laetitia Casta) leaves him for his best friend Paul after becoming pregnant with Paul’s baby. Eight years later, Paul is dead and Abel hopes to rekindle things with Marianne, when Paul’s sister suddenly appears and declares war over Abel. On top of that, Marianne now has a precocious 8-year-old son with a penchant for solving murders. It sounds like a convoluted premise, but Garrel spins a charming and heartfelt tale of romance in a breezy 75 minutes.
COMING TO KINO FILM COLLECTION SEPTEMBER 5.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival
Like Wong Kar-wai meets Blade Runner, Bi Gan’s neo-noir, dipped in dark shadows and saturated colors, follows a man’s quest through the underbelly of his hometown to find a mysterious woman. When Luo returns home to Guizhou for his father’s funeral, he finds a photograph of a woman who had disappeared, prompting him to embark on a journey that melds together his past, present, and dreams. What’s real and what isn’t blur together to create a hypnotizing effect, accentuated by the intoxicating tropical atmosphere. Inarguably, the film’s standout feature is its 59-minute single shot, filmed in 3D and featuring several locations (an abandoned mine, a mountain chairlift, a village square) and an array of chaotic activities (ping pong, scooter ride, karaoke). It’s a technical feat you’ll have to see to believe. That combined with the haunting, fever dream of a story, makes Long Day’s Journey Into Night one of the most unforgettable cinematic experiences of the 21st century.
COMING TO KINO FILM COLLECTION SEPTEMBER 5.